Tour of the Good Shepard
Posted by Marnee Maroes
on May 01, 2012
Today we visited The new Good Shepard buildings on Pearl St. in Hamilton. Thanks to Sharon for organizing this.
We were welcomed by Brother Richard and given a lavish breakfast. He introduced to all the sparkling new facilities and told us stories about some of the past experiences of supporting people in need.
Martha’s House is a 40 unit shelter for women who have experienced domestic violence; it has a unique style based on their prior experience - residents are provided their own family unit so that they can focus on solving their particular crisis and avoid conflict situations that come from shared facilities. Residents stay on average 6 weeks until they can be moved to second stage housing, which are apartments in various locations across the City. They are provided with counselling, children's programs and supported employment programs while in the centre.
Mary’s Place is a 20-bed shelter for women 18 years of age or older in need of safety, support and/or emergency shelter. The staff of Mary’s Place support women in coping with such diverse issues as homelessness, poverty, mental illness and violence.
Seniors and Affordable Housing
We then toured the two new housing facilities, a seniors centre, and a rent geared to income apartments. The seniors centre is currently being occupied and will shortly have an extensive medial support centre developed within the building, with doctors, nurses and specialized care for needs such as diabetes. The affordable housing has 1 and 2 bedroom units and is based on residents paying a rent geared to income that equates to 80% of market rates.
All the units are brand new and fully equipped. For seniors, special care has been taken with accessible bathrooms and other facilities.
After the tour Brother Richard gave us a brief summary of the costs involved'; all levels of government have been involved in providing the >$51M of capital funding but there is still a shortfall of around $3M to be raised. Operating costs of around $13M a year are only covered in part by government funding; around one third must be raised through fundraising. Keith Rutherford of their development Office distributed information on the ways in which bequests and donations can be made to Good Shepard to assist in this.
Finally there was a prize draw; Bruce Eccles was the lucky winner of a knapsack while Fred Amalfi won some fine looking wine.
We all left very impressed with the scope and quality of the services being provided at this new location of Good Shepard.